Always the same old, tired mantra from Iwata: "Please understand". No one believes that it requires much effort to port these older games to newer systems; the games were already completed years ago, and are very simple and undemanding in terms of hardware, so the effort to port them should be minimal.

The problem with the VC last gen was that there was money in it... but ONLY for Nintendo. I don't know if they're doing the same thing this gen., but given the small number of titles, it's likely.

Basically, they had sales thresholds that titles needed to make before the rights-holders got any share of the profits. IE Nintendo would tell third parties something like, "We'll give you 50% of ever sale of your game, after 10,000 units have been sold."

Which meant rights-holders wouldn't see ANY return if their products sold under that threshhold. The Internet is littered with reports of developers and publishers criticizing Nintendo for just that--they spent time and money getting their older game(s) working with the VC, and then didn't earn ANYTHING for it, while Nintendo got rich.

There's a lot more to the business of past gen ports on VC than just ripping and popping it up. Even this sort of thing costs money and man hours, as would hiring more people to cover it and getting in touch/working out deals with other IP holders. Money and man hours that could be used for other, bigger, projects.

People tend to forget that in their haste to find a reason to throw another few verbal punches at Nintendo, lately.